Perdido 03

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Common Core, CCSS Tests, APPR, And InBloom Are A Package Deal

“Common Core is an issue about which there has been a lot of dialogue,” Cuomo spokeswoman Melissa DeRosa said in a statement Tuesday that both affirms the standards and distances the administration from its rocky rollout.

“The
Governor believes there are two issues—Common Core and teacher
evaluations—and they must be analyzed separately,” she concluded.

Common Core, the Common Core Tests, teacher evaluations tied to test scores and the inBloom data project are not separate issues.

All four of these were designed to go together as a package deal.

The CCSS tests and the teacher evaluations tied to the tests ensure that the CCSS is taught in schools and individual classrooms and the inBloom data project is used to track all the stats (which can then be used as carrots or sticks for students, teachers, administrators, schools and school districts.)

I have seen a few journalists repeat the Cuomo line that CCSS and APPR are being "conflated" but the truth is, they were conflated by the designers of these reforms who wanted to push through all of these changes together at the same time.

The reformers feared if all four components to the overall reform package were not pushed through at the same time, the whole reform agenda would fall apart.

In short, why teach CCSS if the tests are not high stakes, teachers are not compelled to teach CCSS because they are being rated on these scores?

Cuomo can try and separate CCSS from APPR all he wants - the reality is, they're part of the same reform agenda and they were meant to be part of a package deal, along with the CCSS tests and the data collection program.